AWP from Counter-Strike, a sniper rifle. Genre-defining weapons – what every shooter needs
Table of Contents
The sniper rifle is one of the favorite weapons of a huge number of players. It allows you to hide, i.e. without exposing yourself to enemy fire, to eliminate targets from a considerable distance. Putting this sense of security aside, however, we have to admit that there is something intoxicating about shooting through a telescope, where without optics we would often not even notice the target, and also in a perfect hit with one bullet. The first appearance of the sniper rifle in FPS games took place in a Quake mod – Team Fortress, where you could choose the appropriate character class for it, but the pioneer was GoldenEye on Nintendo 64. The rifle did not resemble anything known, but its wooden handguard made it a bit like the Walther WA 2000.
A real legend was born a little later, in the form of the AWP (or Magnum Sniper Rifle) sniper rifle in Counter-Strike . The AWP is modeled on the authentic Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Magnum rifle. For many, a weapon that was able to kill several players at the same time was a gross exaggeration and a reason to avoid people playing with it or even ban its use on servers. The fact is, however, that the AWP was one of the most used weapons in Counter-Strike and was eventually accepted by the community, and the developers introduced a number of adjustments over time, reducing, among others, her power. The legend remained, however, and apparently no other weapon in games than AWP caused so much the phenomenon of QQing, i.e. deliberately leaving the server during the match or simply – crying. It certainly contributed to the unpopular phenomenon of camping. Today, the sniper rifle is practically an inseparable part of every shooter, and their uniqueness and popularity is so great that series such as Sniper Elite or Sniper: Ghost Warrior were created, with the sniper rifle as the main weapon throughout the game.
